“You sure you don’t want to come watch in 30 degrees?” Jayhawks’ baseball coach Jordan Basile asks with a smile, referring to the team’s scheduled doubleheader later that afternoon at Diethrick Park.

After the visitor declines, Basile responds: “All I can think about is bundling up.”

Unseasonably cold temperatures notwithstanding, the Jamestown native and Fredonia State Hall-of-Famer is also thinking about something else as the NJCAA Region 3 Division III regular season nears an end, and that would be for the Jayhawks to qualify for the playoffs.

Time will tell.

OBSERVER Photo by Scott Reagle Jordan Basile (32) is a 2009 graduate of Fredonia State where he holds the school record in all-time hits and is in the top 10 in nine other statistical categories.

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With Tuesday’s doubleheader split with Finger Lakes CC, the Jayhawks stand at 6-9 overall and 4-4 in Region 3 West. The top four teams in the region advance to the postseason.

“If we handle our business this week — 4-4, 5-3 or somewhere in that range — we feel pretty good we’re going to be a playoff team,” Basile said. “We know the hand we’re dealt. We know we’re not the deepest on the mound, but we feel if we get in a playoff scenario, we very well could be the best team in the conference.”

One thing is certain, though. Basile truly likes this team, one that is short on numbers — 16 are currently on the roster — but long on leadership.

“We were looking forward to a good year … then COVID hit,” he said. “No excuses, everybody was doing the same thing … We had all the hopes and plans coming into (last) fall that the COVID stuff would slow down, but it wasn’t the case, so we had about half our team report in the fall of 2020. I think we had nine guys here by the end of the fall, knowing we were going to have some coming up.”

But the anticipated 26-man roster never materialized, because several players weren’t comfortable traveling to Jamestown in the midst of a pandemic, leaving Basile with 16 for this spring.

“It’s a credit to the guys we have on the roster right now,” Basile said. “Many of them are from Florida that said, ‘I want to come back to JCC and finish this whole thing with my friends, my boys, and let’s do this thing right.'”

Basile added: “A lot of times, practice can run itself. … When things kind of run themselves, that’s when you know you have a good group. … (Calling them) ‘grinders’ is an understatement.”

Basile knows a thing or two about grinding.

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Just about a year ago, Basile was notified that he was going to be inducted into the Fredonia State Athletics Hall of Fame in recognition of his record-setting career on the Blue Devils’ baseball team. A 2009 graduate, Basile is the school’s all-time hits leader and is in the top 10 in nine other statistical categories. In addition, he set single-season records for hits and runs, and batted a SUNYAC-leading .420 during 2009, a season in which the Blue Devils won a program-record 26 games, including an appearance in the ECAC Upstate New York Tournament.

Upon notification last May that he would be a member of the Class of 2020, Basile admitted that he allowed himself a fist pump when he got off the phone.

He’s had a few similar reactions this spring, including when the Jayhawks swept a doubleheader over Tri-County CC earlier this month.

“It was pretty cool,” Basile admitted. “I think it was the first series that these guys were able to say, ‘Wow, we can do this thing.’ That was the first series that we learned how to win, how it felt to win. Now, it’s an expectation that we’re going to win each time.

“We had a rough weekend last weekend, but we knew it was going to be a challenge. It was a non-conference game against a (NJCAA) Division II team, Monroe, that has scholarships. … We dropped all four, but it was pretty cool, because at the end of the game these guys were pumped up for these two games (against Finger Lakes CC) coming up. They were able to take those four, put it behind them and get ready for (Tuesday’s) games.”

Against Finger Lakes, the Jayhawks lost the opener, 4-0, but came back to win the nightcap, 7-3, on the strength of sophomore Adonis Collado’s complete game. The two teams were scheduled to play a twinbill today at Finger Lakes CC, but it has been postponed.

Bryce Jackson (Jamestown/Jamestown) is the ace of the staff, having compiled a 3-2 record, a 2.90 earned run average, while striking out 48 in 31 innings pitched. He has walked 19.

“(He) is doing exactly what we expected,” Basile said of the right-hander, who had Tommy John surgery on his throwing arm last year. “He is going in and competing, throwing strikes, throwing his off-speed pitches in hitters’ counts, keeping hitters off-balance and finding ways to win games. When Bryce goes out there, we expect to win.

Jamestown CC is led offensively by Colorado native Ethan Abegg (.380) and Wyatt Hennessy (.364), who hails from Wisconsin.

(Abegg) was a guy I wasn’t able to go see, but we did a lot with video communication with his coaches,” Basile said. “He took a huge risk coming here, as well as all of the Florida guys and the other out-of-state guys.”

Hennessy, one of those “out-of-state guys,” has rewarded Basile with his bat in recent games.

“Wyatt struggled a little bit offensively early,” Basile said. “The first few at-bats weren’t the greatest at-bats. Wyatt and I had a conversation about what the best fit for him would be at a four-year school. To make a long story short, I told him he had to start swinging, that he had to get his numbers up.”

Hennessy did precisely that against Monroe CC last weekend, collecting four triples, a home run, a double and a single.

“That was good to see,” Basile said.

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Just two years removed from his time at Fredonia State, Basile worked in player development for the Detroit Tigers during the 2011 season, before securing a position as an assistant coach for the University at Buffalo. He eventually completed work on his master’s degree while serving as an assistant coach at Lake Erie College, and later was named the head baseball coach at Patrick Henry (Virginia) CC where he compiled a 64-32 record and coached 22 players who moved on to Division I and Division II programs.

In the summer of 2019, Basile was named the head coach at Jamestown CC and the manager for the Jamestown Tarp Skunks of the Perfect Game Collegiate Baseball League.

The Tarp Skunks are scheduled to open their season in six weeks.

But Basile still has his sights set on the postseason with the Jayhawks.

“Right now, our goal is to get in,” Basile said. “If we get in, we think we can win it.”